Skinner’s round

Sixty-nine

Skinner's Round

`Team, could you do me a favour?' Skinner asked, as they stood on the first tee, at five minutes before 1 p.m. on the final day of the Murano Million. The crowd which gathered behind them was by far the biggest of the event.

`Name it, my friend,' said Darren Atkinson, with a smile, although his eyes were beginning to narrow as he gathered his concentration for the challenge ahead.

`Could you sign something for me? I can't let this week go by without having a memento of it.' He produced an event programme. 'Hah,' said Darren, 'a punter at heart!' He took the programme, signed it with a flourish, then passed it to Hideo Murano.

As the Japanese automobile heir and the millionaire singer added their signatures, Skinner said, I'm a punter indeed, skipper. I took your advice about going to the bookie's. So did my assistant, your stand-in caddy's fiancee. They gave us seven-to-two against you shooting sixty-three or lower. I've got fifty quid on you to do it. Maggie wasn't as sure though. She reckoned with Mario caddying the odds weren't long enough, so she only bet a fiver!'

McGuire looked relieved by her lack of confidence.

Atkinson gathered the team together. 'Look, boys. This is crunch time. The team event's sewn up. We couldn't lose that if we tried. But in the individual event, I've got a million quid to secure, and I don't want to win it just by a shot or two. Bob, here, he's got something pretty big to go for too. He's in sight of the scratch amateur prize, and he could even shoot lower than one or two of the pros.'

Norton Wales cut in. 'So what you're saying, Darren, boyo, is that you'd like Hideo and me to keep out of the road of you two.'

Atkinson looked flustered by his directness. 'I don't want to be rude, but yes. That's about it.'

`Rude, man! Considering what's at stake, you've been magic all week. Don't worry about us.

There's nothing in the rules to say we have to play, and we won't add anything to the effort, so for today I'll just be a spectator like that lot there. How do you feel, Hideo?'

Beside him, the Japanese nodded emphatically. He and Wales withdrew to the back of the tee, to explain the change of plan to their caddies, and to pay them for their shortest day's work ever.

For the fourth time, the announcer introduced the members of Team Atkinson. For the fourth time the professional and the policeman drove from the first tee. Skinner hit his best drive of the week, around 280 yards, and as close to Witches' Hill as he dared go. Atkinson's shot was majestic, all power and grace, soaring 320 yards down the fairway, leaving him the ideal approach to the flag.

Skinner and the champion walked together towards their drives, the huge gallery scrambling and scampering along the path to their left. As they passed the foot of Witches' Hill, Atkinson saw the line of coloured tape inside the first circle of trees and bushes which roped off the hill, and the uniformed officers who stood at intervals inside the boundary.

`Why's that?' asked Atkinson, pointing to the hill.

Oh we just want to keep any curious spectators off the hill after play, that's all. It's quite a historic site, after all. Or aren't you into history?'

The golfer laughed. 'No, not me.'

They reached Skinner's ball. He selected a four-iron and struck a safe, straight shot to the front edge of the green. It stopped thirty feet from the flag, making an opening par secure.

Atkinson's feathered eight-iron was perfect. It rose through the still air, biting into the lush green five feet from the hole, backspin stopping it dead. Skinner shook his head. `How you can do that with an eight-iron defeats me. I can hardly get my wedge shots to hold on the green.'

`Practice, partner. Practice for a lifetime, and the impossible will become merely the difficult.'

Atkinson's birdie putt never wavered, and they moved on to the second, a 385-yard dogleg hole which bent right around the hill even more severely than the first, with an area of rough on the left placed strategically to force players, in theory, to hit iron shots from the tee.

Skinner's conservative shot left him further from the green than at the much longer first, but Atkinson took his four-wood from the bag and hit a high shot, with an early hip movement which helped it fade from left to right round the curve of the hill, bending like a well-struck free-kick in soccer.

They set off down the fairway. 'I don't mind telling you, Darren,' said Skinner. 'I'll be bloody glad when this week's over, and this whole circus has left my pleasant wee county.

This whole thing started with a murder, of a man I knew, and it's ending with something just as bad.'

`What, you mean Morton?'

`Who said anything about Morton, man?'

Atkinson paused. 'Well, he ducked out of the dinner last night, then he didn't show for breakfast this morning. I figured that you'd found Mr Nice and that he'd done a runner before you could arrest him.'

`Good guess, that. We've found Andrews all right. He's been a pain in the arse all week, but we've tracked him down.' Skinner stopped as he reached his ball. He looked at the lie and the line. 'Give me a three-iron, please, Neil,' he said to McIlhenney. Taking the club from his makeshift caddy, he hit another careful shot, which carried once more to the front of the green, a few feet closer to the flag than at the first.

`Good shot,' said Darren. 'Play to match par, not beat it. Pros play for birdies, all but the very best amateurs for pars. Remember that, play enough and you could get your handicap down to something near scratch.' His perfect tee shot had left him an approach of no more than 115 yards to the green. `Wedge please, caddy.' He took the club from McGuire and hit an approach to the flag which finished even closer than the shot at the first. For a moment Skinner thought that it would drop into the hole.

As they moved on to the third, a 220-yard par-three with a green almost surrounded by bunkers, Atkinson was already two under par. He smacked his two-iron to the back of the long green, its widest point, leaving himself with a long putt but with his par secure. Skinner's three-iron was short of the green, but his thin chip ran fortuitously close to the hole to secure a third par.

They came to the fourth tee and surveyed the 465-yard hole, its fairway bisected 240 yards away by the stream which flowed from the murky Truth Loch. 'You know, Darren,' said Skinner. 'I can tell you now, I've spent a good part of this week thinking that you might be the ultimate target of whoever's been killing people out there. Anyone as good as you, and as successful as you has to have a host of enemies, and if one hated you enough to want you dead… well. I've known circumstances before when a series of crimes were committed to confuse us, and throw us off balance, while the real target is achieved.'

He shook his head. Not this time, though. Every crime committed this week has had a purpose, and very strong motives behind it. The strongest of the lot, actually: power and money. The only time we've been off balance this week was when Hector Kinture's mother sent that bloody silly note to the Scotsman.'

He fell silent as Atkinson addressed his ball and hit a towering drive, carrying the stream by fifty yards and taking a high forward bounce. He stepped up in turn, concentrating with all his might. His drive cleared the water also, and ran on to finish 300 yards out, his longest of the week.

They strode off the tee together. 'By the way,' said Skinner, `the third note was dropped off in the early hours of this morning, at the Daily Record office in George Street.'

Atkinson looked across at him, with raised eyebrows. Skinner glanced back, with a sad look in his eyes, an expression of huge disappointment.

`You know, Darren,' he said, 'it was the way you treated poor Sue Kinture that started me thinking that maybe your feet had a touch of clay in them.

I reckon you must have women throwing themselves at you all the time. But if you took those opportunities, they'd deflect your concentration from the main mission, to be Number One, and you wouldn't be quite the ruthless bastard that you are.' They reached the narrow stone bridge which crossed the stream. Skinner stood aside to allow Atkinson to cross first.

`Sue's a really nice lady you know. OK, she's married and she shouldn't have made eyes at you, but old Hector is no good to her between the sheets, and out of his frustration with his condition, he gives her a hard time now and again, so there's an excuse. But she didn't deserve what you did to her, screwing her brains out in her own house on the night of the PGA dinner, then cutting her virtually dead the next day.

`No gentleman behaves like that, Darren — yet that's your image, the first gentleman of golf.

I was really disappointed in you, when Sue told Sarah, and Sarah told me.

And then I realised.' He stopped at his ball, and hit an adrenaline-charged six-iron into the heart of the green. He handed the club back to Mcllhenney. 'As I said, I realised what had happened to cause your change of heart.'

They stopped at Atkinson's ball. The champion took an eight-iron and hit a solid shot ten feet from the flag. 'Hope I'm not putting you off talking like this,' said Skinner. 'I've got a few quid riding on you after all. It's just that it's so much easier to tell you my story out here.'

They strode steadily towards the green.

`We were discussing your behaviour towards Susan. It came to me that you changed towards her after I told you about the Keyman arrangement Hector had with Michael White, and that, because of it, he wouldn't need or want any new cash in Witches' Hill.

I remembered that and I thought, "What a pity, Darren's not such a nice guy after all, shagging the poor lady just to get her to support him as the replacement investor in the venture, then dumping her when he finds that's a non-runner." And that's all I thought at first.'

He lined up his putt and sent it a foot or two past the hole, marked his ball and watched as Atkinson's ten-footer lipped the hole, drawing a gasp from the crowd, then swung a few inches past. The champion tapped in, slapping his thigh in frustration. Skinner said nothing, but rolled in his putt for a fourth straight par.

They walked across to the fifth hole, another par-three, but shorter at 170 yards than the third.

The air seemed heavier than ever. Skinner glanced up. The clouds seemed lower, leaden and more threatening. 'Yes,' he said. 'That's all I thought at first. But then my nasty, dark, suspicious polisman's imagination went to work, and I started having the sort of thoughts that wake you up in the night.

`That's when detecting really does become like golf, Darren. After all the practice, a good golfer imagines playing the shot he's faced with, and then he plays it to make his vision reality. After all the teamwork, the good detective pictures in his mind the commission of the crime. Then he goes out to see if the evidence is there to colour in his outline. And when the really good detective goes looking, a guy like me, with a really nasty, suspicious mind, it nearly always is.'

Atkinson's back was to him, over his ball, as he finished speaking. His shot was majestic, a high seven-iron pitching over the flag. Behind them their massive gallery cheered, then groaned as the backspin this time took the Titleist back down the slope of the green. Skinner hit a five-iron. The ball caught the sole of his club and flew low. It pitched short of the green but ran on, finishing, to his and the crowd's surprise, slightly closer to the hole than the classic shot of the champion.

They walked from the tee together, as before. Skinner resumed his narrative. The first thought that came to me, as we bathed the baby one night, was "Why is Darren rubbishing this course quite so hard?" I mean it's brand-new, but it's well over seven thousand yards long, and to any normal human being, even a seasoned pro like Tiger Nakamura, it looks bloody difficult. Suddenly, among all the rubbishing, I caught a whiff of something unpleasant, and potentially, dangerous. I caught the scent of envy. And then, to add to that, I remembered something else. I wasn't able to confirm it until this morning, but once I did, that part of the story was pretty well firmed up.'

He fell silent for a while as they reached the green, as he watched Atkinson line up his putt across the difficult, slanting surface, and hit it, to stop two inches above the hole. The champion tapped in and stood back, applauding with the rest, as Skinner two-putted safely for his par. 'You're doing well, partner,' he said, coolly. 'Keep up the good work.'

`Thanks,' said Skinner as he tossed his putter to Mcllhenney, and began the twisting walk to the next tee. Anyway,' he went on, 'as I was saying, another recollection had come to me.

Last Sunday, Lord Kinture was telling me about all the people who wanted to invest in Witches' Hill. "Everyone and his brother literally" he said.'

`When I asked him again, this morning, he confirmed what I had guessed. He told me that, originally, you and your brother Rick had wanted to be major players in Witches' Hill. In fact you wanted to be the majority players, and to have sway over architecture, management and everything else. He said that you two realised that Witches' Hill had the potential to become the world's top golfing resort in the world's finest golfing country. He told me that you offered him all the development capital and your input on design, assuming that he'd jump at the chance.

But he and Mickey White didn't want you or your money. They had their own, and their own ideas and plans for Witches' Hill. Lord Kinture said that when he turned you down, you and Rick were… "incandescent" was his word.'

He paused as they reached the tee, and looked down the narrow sixth fairway. 'So Darren, I added all that up in my nasty detective's head, and I was forced to a conclusion that I genuinely hate… that as well as Mafioso Mike Morton, another potential bidder, but a man who tends to pick fights in public with people who have crossed him, I've got two other people with just as strong a motive for killing Michael White.'

Skinner broke off, as Atkinson hit a careful three-wood to the heart of the fairway, away from any of the inviting bunkers. His own shot, a full drive, edged perilously close to a sand-trap on the right, but bounded just beyond its clutches. They marched off together once more.

`Where was I?' said Skinner. 'Yes, White. As I picture it, you and Rick saw him as the barrier to your involvement in Witches' Hill. You knew that Kinture needed his cash. So you reckoned that if he was dead, you and Rick could buy out his widow. You had the motive, you two, and your behaviour with Sue Kinture, plus your comment to me that you'd like to invest, proved that you had thought about it after the event. So why not before it?'

He paused and looked at Atkinson. The champion was striding along beside him, head down, unsmiling, looking for all the world as if he was concentrating on his next shot. 'That brought me to the heart of it, Darren. Could I picture you, you of all people, as someone who would murder, who would take lives in pursuit of gain or ambition?

And the terrible thing is, man, and it pains me, I can.' He shook his head.

`Hundreds, thousands of people, maybe more, have the motivation to murder. The questions which follow are, "Is it worth it?" and "Are they the sort of people who would kill for their own gain?" Whatever the answer to the first question, the answer to the second is almost invariably — and fortunately — a loud "No!"

`Premeditated killers, as opposed to the spur-of-the-moment domestic variety, are totally ruthless in their pursuit of an objective. They are totally determined. They are dedicated.

They are mentally very, very strong.

I've just described the qualities which go to make business tycoons, fighting soldiers, successful policemen and many others, including champion sportsmen. The difference between all of them and the sort of person who killed White is that they possess compassion.

They have the conscience gene that's missing from the killer's DNA make-up.

I've dealt with people like that, Darren. I can pick them out. My method's pretty crude, but I've never known it to fail. I choose my moment, and I just look into their eyes!'

They stopped at Skinner's ball. He beckoned McIlhenney towards him, and selected a wedge.

His shot was high and sure, to the back of the green, not flirting with the bunker on its front edge, behind which the hole was cut. Atkinson, emotionless, called for his sand-iron, and floated a soft, delicate shot. If the putting surface had been a dartboard, it would have been a bull.

They approached the green and the champion looked stonily at the ground ahead. 'I've looked into your eyes, Darren. I did it again, just now. Every time you concentrate on a golf shot, and hit it, the real you is there to be seen. You can't hide it. I look, and I see ruthlessness, determination, dedication and strength. But I don't see a trace of compassion.

I've looked in your eyes, my friend, and I believe. You could do it. You've got deadly eyes, Darren, the kind I've seen in dozens of interview rooms and, once or twice, in people standing over their victims. None of them have ever walked away from me.'

He lined his putt and hit it straight and sure, to the edge of the hole. Atkinson's attempt, from fifteen feet, stopped on the edge. Characteristically, he slapped his thigh, the only form of emotion he had shown since the round began.

They walked off the green together. 'I can read your mind as well,' said Skinner. 'You're thinking, "I'm all right. He can't prove a thing. I was in England when White was butchered, in the midst of a crowd at Bracklands when Masur was drowned, and at the dinner last night when Morton was set alight."'

Skinner looked quickly at him, sideways as he spoke. Atkinson's expression stayed stony.

`That's it, Darren,' the policeman said quietly. 'That's the last piece of proof, and all the confession I'll ever need. The fact that I told you about Morton, whose death is still a secret to everyone except my people, Lord Kinture, and Arthur Highfield, and you never even twitched… because you knew!'

They stepped in silence on to the seventh tee. Atkinson looked down the length of the 575-yard hole, reached out a hand to McGuire for his driver and crashed out one of the longest drives that Skinner had ever seen. The ball carried for over 300 yards and bounced on for another fifty.

As he bent to retrieve his tee, for an instant the real Darren Atkinson looked up at Skinner. He spoke not a word, but in a flashing moment, his mask of affability was ripped away and a driven fury shone in his eyes.

The policeman stared back at him, unblinking, before turning away to concentrate his mind on the shot ahead. His drive was as straight as Atkinson's, but finished sixty yards shorter.

It's right, though,' said Skinner as they jumped down from the slightly elevated tee. 'You do have alibis for each crime. But Rick, your brother, he doesn't.'

They walked in silence to their second shots. Skinner's three-wood approach left him fifty yards short of the green, but Atkinson's sweetly struck two-iron soared unerringly to its heart.

`You might not believe this,' said Skinner, on the move once more, 'but the fact that you and Rick are twins might have escaped me, but for my friend Henry Wills. He saw you yesterday, in the exhibition tent, and he thought you were Rick.

`Because he taught him, you see, at university back in the early eighties. He taught him history. In the tent, Henry called out, "Reginald". I turned, and you were there with Sandro Gregory, stepping off the Shark's Fin stand. But you didn't see us, or react to Henry's shout, and I thought nothing of it at the time.

`When Henry saw you later, from a distance, and learned who you were, he thought he'd made a mistake. Of course in effect he was right. When he saw you, he really did see the face of his old student. But Henry's only good with faces, and he couldn't recall the name that

"Reginald" used, so at that point, I didn't twig. I didn't make the connection until Morton said something about you and your doppelganger brother. Even then it took me a while to say to myself, "Bugger me, they're twins!"

I asked Arthur Highfield this morning. "Two peas in a pod," he told me. "Darren takes care of the golf, Rick takes care of the business with the same dedication. You hardly ever see them together," he said, "but when you do you can only tell them apart by their clothes and by Darren's big golfer's hands." Oh yes, Darren, and by one other thing. Rick's a smoker, according to Highfield.

I haven't met your brother yet, but when I do, when eventually I choose my moment and look into his eyes, I bet I'll see the same thing there that I see in yours.'

Skinner reached his ball, and took his sand wedge from McIlhenney, who, with McGuire, was following just too far behind to be within earshot. 'With that,' he said, 'the jigsaw was complete. I saw the whole picture in my nasty detective's mind — a pair of murderous twins, ready to do anything in the pursuit of their objective. To be Number One… in everything.'

He chipped carefully on to the green, avoiding the direct line to the flag over a wide bunker, but making his par-five secure.

It's quite a thought, isn't it?' he said as they walked on to the green. The Atkinson Twins, two psychopaths out to rule not just a chunk of some city, but the game of golf, both on and off the course.'

He stood back and watched as the champion's eagle putt rolled just past the hole, and joined in the applause of the gallery as he tapped in to go three under par. 'Keep it up, Darren,' he said smiling as he walked away, having completed his own par. I'm backing you to shoot sixty-three, remember.

Anyway, back to poor old Michael White.'

`There you are, you and Rick, thwarted over Witches' Hill. Good losers, so Kinture and White think, for you agree to play in the Murano Million, and Rick signs M'tebe, Urquhart and Andres in as well. Rick even comes up and plays a round with Michael White, who shows him his private changing room, and tells him about his habit of bathing in his Jacuzzi, rather than showering, after each round.

`You and Rick make your plans. You know about the practice round last Sunday, because Andres is playing in it. So Rick leaves the tour event last Saturday… same day as Richard Andrews goes off to have his piles done.'

He stopped as they stepped up on to the eighth tee, from which the clubhouse was in sight once more. Atkinson ripped off another deadly accurate drive down. the 430-yard hole.

Skinner, following, played cautiously with a three-wood to avoid the meandering stream.

They fell in step once more, coming close to the skirting crowd, hearing their shouts of encouragement. 'Last Sunday, while everyone is out on the course, Rick just wanders in to the club. He hides in the starter's hut, over there.' As he walked, Skinner pointed casually towards the square building on the horizon.

`While he's in there, he smokes a couple of fags. Unusual fags. Last week's sponsors were dishing them out at the event, to those and such as those, but you can't buy them in the shops yet. He left a couple of stubs. There's nothing we can match on them, but they certainly cut down our list of possibles. Cut it down to one, in fact, since Andrews was having his arse examined in Surrey by that time.

Eventually he sees the first match coming in and it's White and Cortes. He nips, unseen, into the clubhouse through the open door which is normally used only as an exit. He goes into White's changing room and through into the Jacuzzi.'

Skinner broke off to play his second shot, a three-iron which finished on the front edge of the green, then he and the champion, their caddies following a few yards behind, walked off towards another stone bridge across the stream.

A few minutes later, White comes in. He puts his watch and stuff on the shelf, and he's hanging up his towel beside it when Rick smashes him on the side of the head. He drops like a stone. The blow might have killed him, but Rick makes sure. He's as big and powerful as you, and he heaves him into the bath, so there'll be no mess. Then he cuts the poor bugger's throat.'

They reached Atkinson's drive. The champion's wedge-shot was poor by his standards, but still finished only twenty feet from the hole.

`Can you imagine anything as callous as that? Of course you can, you helped plan it! While the rest are gathering in the bar, Michael White is left dead in bubbling water turned pink by his blood. It doesn't bear thinking about, but it happened.' Skinner shook his head, and shuddered.

After he's done the business, Rick counts the rest in, then nips out by the door he used to come in. He takes White's wallet and wristwatch, in the hope that we'll assume it was murder associated with theft. Then he has his first piece of bad luck. He meets Hughie Webb, greenkeeper, nursing his Sunday hangover. Hughie, who's not too bright, takes him for you, and asks for an autograph. And Rick, desperate to be on his way, takes his grubby Gullane scorecard and signs on the back, "Best wishes, Darren Atkinson". From the quick glance that I had back on the first tee, his signature's quite like yours. Maybe he signs some of your photos, for you, eh?'

He stopped to play his approach shot, striking it rather too hard, and knocking it twelve feet past the hole. But, after another birdie attempt by the champion had missed by a millimetre, he stepped up and knocked in the putt for his eighth straight par.

As they crossed to the tee of the 540-yard par-five ninth, which, like the opening holes, curved round Witches' Hill and back towards the clubhouse, Skinner said, reflectively, 'It's quite a story, champ. And you know, if you'd left it at that, at White's murder alone, I'd probably never have caught on.

`Hughie Webb's a lousy witness. He doesn't know whether it's breakfast or Easter, so even if I'd found that connection, I'd probably have assumed that he'd made a mistake and had met you on the Monday. It was only when I started thinking in the context of all three murders that I tied you in.

If you'd just been a bit less greedy, a bit less ambitious. But not you and Rick. Suddenly you saw a chance to make the big jump you'd been dreaming about.'

They smashed two more crunching tee-shots down the ninth, but Atkinson's ball took a bad bounce and, to the groans of the gallery, was swallowed by a bunker 290 yards out.

`What you two want, Darren,' Skinner resumed as they walked on, 'is to make DRA Management, absolutely the number one, unchallenged leader in world golf management.

You told me casually that your ambitions extended to America. Now I see how strong they are. The fact that Mike Morton made a half-hearted attempt to lean on you a few years back probably convinced you that you wouldn't beat SSC by business means, and the whole of Asia knows about Masur's Yakuza connection.

`No, the game plan which the terrible twins drew up called for the elimination of the strong men at the head of SSC and Greenfields, each of whom held his business together. With them out of the way you'd move in. You'd sign up the top boys not just in Europe, but in the Americas, Asia and Australasia as well. You'd control the game. DRA would be Number One, worldwide.

`That's the plan. Suddenly you see a chance to put it all into practice in one sweep. Masur and Morton are both here. Even better, they're at each other's throats over Tiger Nakamura.'

Skinner's ball was only a few yards short of Atkinson's bunker. He thought about trying for the green but saw the sand lying in wait ahead, and hit a five-wood, leaving himself a thirty-yard pitch to the green.

The champion's ball was plugged wickedly in the bunker. Even with his strength and skill he was able only to coax it clear by a few feet, the ball landing in straggly semi-rough, only its top visible. Looking at the lie, Skinner expected him to select a mid-iron and to trust to his wedge to save par. But he was mistaken. Three-wood, please, Mario,' said Atkinson. To the astonishment of the gallery, Atkinson took the club and, from that position, fashioned the finest golf shot Skinner had ever seen. The ball soared away, on a right-left drawn trajectory, rather than the usual professional's faded shot, flying against the line of the curving fairway, flirting with the trees of Witches' Hill, but plunging, as if wire-guided, into the centre of the green and rolling up to the very edge of the hole. The spectators in the small stand behind the green rose to their feet as one. The gallery around the golfers cheered wildly. As the ball came to rest, Atkinson glared across at Skinner with fire in his eyes, and his lips drawn back in a silent animal snarl.

As they walked on down the fairway, the policeman said quietly. 'That was a sort of answer, Darren, wasn't it? You know, it's as well you use golf clubs, not firearms. Otherwise I think I'd have to kill you, and I'd hate that.'

His tone changed and became conversational once more. As I said, I've encountered people like you two before. They've always perished on the sword of their own ambition. You guys have perished on your imagination. Just as no one else would have imagined that shot back there, so no one but Rick would have had the flair to fasten on that bloody stupid note by Hector Kinture's mother to the Scotsman.

`The trouble is, once I found something out, it was like a signature. And what I discovered was that Rick, as Henry Wills's student fifteen years back, had heard the vague, unsupported tale of the Witch's Curse.

It was dismissed as colourful folklore by serious academics like Henry, but it stuck in Rick's mind, and when he read the old Lady Kinture's piece of nonsense in the newspaper, he had his brainwave. "Blade, Fire and Water", the old curse said, and here you were, with your potential victims, at Witches' Hill.' He paused to allow the champion to stride ahead on to the green, smiling and waving to the cheering crowds, and to tap his ball in for a fourth birdie.

Then he played his chip, safely, to the green, and walked on to secure his par.

`Four under at the turn,' said Skinner, as they stepped the few yards to the tenth tee. 'We need five more on the back nine if Maggie and I are to pick up our winnings.'

`Don't worry,' said Atkinson, solemn and deadly serious. `You're on a sure thing.'

I'm firing him up,' thought Skinner as he watched another monstrous drive leaving the champion with the shortest of second shots to the green 390 yards away. 'The harder I go at him the better he's playing. The man's an animal. And he's pulling me after him,' he added as an afterthought as his own drive split the fairway, soaring out 300 yards to astonished applause.

Golfer and policeman resumed their side-by-side march, and their parallel duel. 'You shouldn't have let Rick do that, you know. The problem you had was that the first note had something about it. The old lady had seen the real Witch's Curse. You see, it was a sort of family secret. Eventually I saw it too, and it was clear to me that the second note had a different author, someone who'd only heard the story of the curse, not the full version.

`When we found Morton last night, I knew there'd be another. We had men outside all the newspaper offices this morning waiting for Rick, but he beat us to it.

`The notes kept us off balance for a bit. They took up resources. The one thing I never bought for a second was the notion that there might actually be a local coven intent on fulfilling the curse, but it was still a line that had to be investigated.

And it all turned on itself in the end. While at first the note was no lead at all to Michael White's killers, eventually it turned into one, when you two decided to ape it. And when we got lucky again, discovering that Rick attended Henry Wills's classes, man, it pointed me right at the pair of you.'

They reached Skinner's ball. Again he took no chances with the sand on his left, or the waters of the Truth Loch on his right. He hit a low, punched shot, pitching the ball and sending it skipping on to the safe part of the green, making his par virtually certain. It had hardly come to rest, before Atkinson was ready. His ball almost split the flag as his sand wedge sent it spinning towards the hole. 'Five under, I think,' he said quietly.

The Truth Loch was even more in play on the eleventh hole, biting a chunk from the fairway and forcing even Atkinson to play it as a dogleg, taking iron from the tee. He and Skinner hit safe tee-shots, then followed with three-wood approaches. The champion's shot reached the green easily, while the policeman's was short but safe.

`So here we are,' said Skinner as they walked along the waterside. 'White's dead, and we're chasing our tails. Then Mike Morton does you a huge favour by picking a fight with Masur, right in front of me. It was such an inviting set-up that you just couldn't resist it. So there's Masur after the dinner, walking back, over there.' He pointed across the loch towards the outline of the ducking stool. 'He's even in the right spot. Rick comes out of the darkness.

Probably Masur thinks that it's you, that you've decided to walk back too. He doesn't see the threat until it's hit him on the back of the head. He's out as he's tied into the chair. And even if he wakes tip as he's lowered into the water, all he can do is struggle, as the water fills his lungs.' He paused, with another slight shudder.

`Next morning, the body's found, and of course we suspect Morton straightaway, as you planned. The silly bugger even compounds his predicament by going for a walk in the garden at Bracklands after dark and getting mud on his shoes!

I have to admit, the murder of Masur was real creative thinking. Not your average assassination. And that was where it really started to go wrong for you, when you first over-reached yourself.

`Because the trouble was, it was too creative for Morton or Richard Andrews. They're old-fashioned Mafiosi types. Their way would have been to take the back of Masur's head off with a silenced. 38, not something as flashy as that. I doubt if Andrews would have taken Masur off-guard, either.'

He stopped, concentrating hard on his third shot to the par-four hole. Abandoning caution for once, he took his wedge and surprised even himself by hitting his shot to within a yard of the pin. He raised his club to acknowledge the crowd's applause, and walked on to the green, marking his ball to allow Atkinson to claim a safe par before completing his own.

'Still, we had no choice but to treat Morton as our chief suspect,' he said as they walked to the tee of the 230-yard par-three twelfth. 'With Andrews unaccounted for, he was still the best bet we had.' He shook his head. 'Then Rick dropped that bloody note at the Herald, and I said to myself "Wait a minute!"

The editor's a pal of mine, and he agreed not to use it. That didn't bother you, though. You weren't after publicity. You just wanted us to see it, without taking the chance of dropping it on our doorstep. You knew that Morton wasn't the murderer, so you saw the second note as a back-up, to forestall, you thought, any chance of us looking in your direction.'

He stopped as Atkinson lined up his two-iron and smacked the ball greenwards, over the guarding bunker, to land eight yards from the flag. Skinner's three-wood was high, so high that he thought for a moment, as he watched it against the now threatening clouds, that it would drop into the sand, but, willed on by striker and crowd, it carried safely to the fringe of the green.

`You poisoned Bravo for the same reason, of course,' he said as they walked on. 'Right about here. With me on the scene as the perfect witness to an attempt on your life. I thought "What a stoic you are, Darren," as I watched the way you played on after it, as if you were in no danger. Which of course, you weren't, other than from me, eventually.

`Yes, that spiked drink was intended for poor old Bravo all along. I'd asked you about Mr Nice by that time, and you thought, "What a good idea to make the coppers think that he's after me as well!" A nice wee piece of insurance against the silly polis looking too hard at other people's motives for murder, including yours.'

He reached back and accepted his putter from McIlhenney as they reached the green. His ball was just off the putting surface, but the grass was even and he was able to roll his approach smoothly and safely up to the side of the hole, for a slightly fortuitous three. Atkinson's eight-yarder across the slope of the green was beautifully judged, curving down from the right to finish three inches behind the hole.

`Lovely putt, Darren,' said Skinner as they walked through a small coppice to the raised tee of the 565-yard par-five thirteenth, a monster of a hole with a narrow tree-lined fairway for the first 250 yards, opening out into a bunker-fringed hogsback. 'That must have been hellish difficult to read. But then you're at your best under pressure, aren't you?'

As he had done on the first three days, Atkinson took a three-wood from the thirteenth tee, avoiding the dangers of the hogsback. Skinner played even safer hitting a two-iron for accuracy, low between the corridor of trees.

`That was Rick at the side of the tee, wasn't it?' said Skinner as they walked on. 'Rick gave that wee boy the drinks, done up in his rain gear, in glasses and a floppy hat, so no one would recognise him and think they were seeing double. Of course you couldn't risk the spiked drink going astray. So you had that in your bag all along. The drinks that were handed out, so publicly, were clean, but you did a double shuffle with the bottles.'

He tapped Atkinson, convivially on the arm. 'Hey, maybe you dumped the spare one on the course. The bins are all emptied daily, but just maybe, if I used enough people to sift through the public refuse tip, I might get lucky and find something odd; a full, untainted bottle of isotonic thirst quencher, with your prints on it, and Rick's, and those of that wee boy. Doubt it, though. I'll do you the courtesy of assuming that you wiped it.'

They reached their tee-shots. Skinner used his two-iron again, clearing the hogsback and finding a flat piece of fairway 100 yards from the green. Atkinson put his ball thirty yards closer, with a four-iron.

`That was an awful thing to do to Bravo, Darren. He thought he was your pal as well as your caddy.

It was an awful thing you did to Oliver M'tebe too, having his father kidnapped by those two Australians, just to put him off his game this week. That boy must be the goods right enough.

They say he's approaching your class already, and that he'll be the next Number One.'

Eventually,' said Atkinson, evenly. 'That's why we signed him up. But the time isn't here yet, Bob, not yet.'

`No, but he's enough of a threat now for you to do something about it. After all there's a million pounds in the pot this week. The biggest prize ever, and you weren't going to let anyone else lift it, were you, not even if you picked up your manager's thirty per cent as a consolation.

`So you had Mr M'tebe picked up. You hired those two Aussie caddies, guys you knew would be linked to Masur, not you, and they picked him up off the street, just like that. The South African police hadn't a clue where to look.'

The thirteenth green was on a rise, like the tee, and guarded by two bunkers. Skinner judged the distance carefully, and hit a full shot with his wedge. Polite applause from around the green told him that he had found the putting surface. Atkinson's feathered shot, hit with his third wedge, was a dream of a shot, all softness and touch. It followed the flag unerringly, and drew a roar from the gallery. The two strode up the slope to the green.

Of course, pinching M'tebe's old man wasn't part of your grand design,' said Skinner as they walked. 'I wasn't really interested in who did that, until one of the Aussies let something slip.

The Reverend was smarter than they expected. Just before he escaped, one of them used the name, "RA". At first, I assumed he meant Richard Andrews, but when all the other pieces fell into place, I realised that he didn't. He was talking about Rick Atkinson.

`That's when you shattered my last illusions about honour and the nobility of the human spirit, Darren. I mean, multiple murder's one thing,' he said, his tone filled with ironic sadness, `but fixing a golf tournament, for God's sake! How could you?'

He shook his head and sighed, almost theatrically. 'Poor Oliver, poor Bravo. Reminds me of the old saying, about there being no greater love than that of the man who'd lay down the lives of his friends to save his own!'

Skinner's ball was indeed awaiting him on the narrow green as he crested the rise, even if it was fifty feet from the hole. He lined it up, thinking only of distance, and rolled it up, stopping it two feet to the right of the hole to secure, to his inner joy, his thirteenth par.

`So there we are, Darren,' he said, walking to the fourteenth, a relatively gentle 414-yard par-four, designed by the course architect to imbue a false sense of security into the unwary before the tigerish finishing holes. Two enemies dead, the tournament in your hands, the police protecting your life and limb, and Mike Morton, your last target, in deep trouble with us.

`But that gives you a problem. We're watching Morton like a hawk, in case Richard Andrews tries to make contact with him. Ironic, isn't it, we're treating Morton as a murder suspect, and by doing so we're protecting him from the real killers.'

He laughed as they stepped out on to the tee. Atkinson looked away from him down the fairway. He took his driver from McGuire and sent the ball an effortless 290 yards. Skinner did his best to copy the ease and smoothness of his swing, and was rewarded by a straight drive which carried around 240 yards but pulled up sharply on the fairway, running on only a further ten yards.

`You know,' said Skinner, suddenly serious, as they headed off once more, 'I'll have Mike Morton on my conscience for as long as I live. If I had kept him under surveillance, he'd still be alive. I couldn't see the whole picture at that time, yet it should have occurred to me that if Morton wasn't behind the two murders, and the attack on you, then he might easily be a target himself. But he shot his mouth off at me yesterday afternoon, and I got annoyed. I still wanted to speak to Andrews, if only to close off that line of enquiry, so I gave Morton twenty-four hours without cover to produce him, and the threat of what would happen if he didn't. But in truth, the poor bugger genuinely didn't know where Andrews was!'

He paused, and looked sideways at Atkinson again. 'You must have thought all your Christmases had come at once, when you saw my people drive away from Bracklands. One day to go, and a clear shot at Morton, if you can get him on his own.'

When they reached it, Skinner's ball was sitting up nicely for his next shot. Once more, the flag was protected by a deep bunker, making a direct approach hazardous, and so he hit his five-iron instead carefully to the wide area of open green to the right. Even Atkinson fought shy of a direct attack on the flag, landing his soft eight-iron twenty feet away.

It turns out to be pretty easy. Rick phones Morton, doesn't he? He tells him he wants to meet him in secret, last night. Maybe he says that he wants to talk to him about his company and yours co-operating now that Masur's out of the way.' Skinner was looking closely at Atkinson as he spoke. Beneath the mask of impassivity, he thought that he detected the faintest twitch of an eyebrow.

`Morton agrees to meet him. He says he'll skip the dinner. Rick says, "Good, let's meet where no one'll interrupt us. How about on top of Witches' Hill, just after dark?" Morton says OK, and he's a dead man.'

Skinner lined up his putt, lagging it almost perfectly once more, leaving himself an eighteen-inch tap-in. Atkinson stalked his putt like a tiger, in pursuit of his seventh birdie, but once again found only the lip of the hole.

It was only when I stood on the top of that hill this morning, looking at what was left of Morton that the whole thing fell into place,' said Skinner as they walked from the green. 'I thought about his "doppelganger" remark, I thought about Henry's case of mistaken identity, I thought about the second note, and I knew right then what I should have worked out yesterday. If I had, I'd have saved Morton's life.

It takes a very special sort of person to plan and to do what your brother Rick did to Morton'

The policeman's conversational tone had gone, and his voice was hard and cold. 'I've only ever met one other man who could have done that. I breathed a sigh of genuine relief when he died. But now I've met two more like him.

`To lure him up there; to ambush him; to handcuff him to a tree; to pile the wood around him; to set fire to it; to stuff his handkerchief into his mouth to choke off his screams. And then, I guess, to watch him, as he writhed against the flames, until you were quite sure the job was done.

`Yes, you're very special guys, you Atkinsons. I'm looking forward to meeting you side by side.'

They had reached the fifteenth tee, 195 yards away from its small green, which sloped away so that only the top of the flag could be seen. Although only a par-three, it had proved the most difficult hole on the course.

`So how about it, Darren?' said Skinner, very quietly, so that only he and Atkinson could hear. 'This has been one-way traffic so far. I've shown you what I can see with my detective's vision. It's all logical, and to me it's all unanswerable truth, and maybe I can even prove it. So what d'you say? Underneath all that calm, have I got to you, you ruthless, murderous bastard?'

The golfer turned to him, with the animal look on his face once more. 'Sure Bob. I'm just scared helpless. Let me show you how scared I am.'

He turned and called to McGuire, the professional smile brought back as quickly as it had been banished. Four-iron, please, Mario.'

He took the club from McGuire, and hit a shot so audacious that even Skinner was amazed.

Rather than playing the hole in the only way which seemed possible, by hitting safely to the back of the green and settling for two safe putts, he fired in a shot on a lower trajectory. The backspin seemed to make the ball sizzle off the club-face. The crowd sucked in its collective breath in suspense as it zoomed towards the target, to pitch, clearly, above the flag. Suddenly the gallery clustered on the viewing platform behind the green, roared its applause. `Bugger,' said Atkinson quietly, after a few seconds. 'It hasn't gone in, they're not jumping high enough!'

Through the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth, Bob Skinner, the rest of the onlookers, and the television audience across Europe, saw a display which was to be ranked by commentators as the finest burst of tournament golf ever played. Atkinson seemed to select shots which looked impossible, then to execute each one perfectly. The ten-inch birdie putt at the fifteenth was followed on the next hole by two six-iron shots, one from the tee, the next to within a yard of the flag. The 527-yard seventeenth was humbled by an impossibly long drive, a five-iron and a six-foot putt for an eagle, taking the imperious champion to ten under par.

In the face of this awesome, intimidating display, Skinner kept his concentration. He felt himself inspired by the unspoken challenge of this chilling man, and played the best golf of his own life, extending his string of successive pars to what was for him an unprecedented seventeen.

At last they stood together on the eighteenth tee. 'Looks like you're in the money, Bob,' said Atkinson, and Skinner alone caught the trace of mockery in his voice. 'A par up the last for a sixty-two, and this finishing hole; I mean it really isn't worthy of me.' He looked down the 472-yard par-four hole. The southern side of the Truth Loch made a jagged bite into the fairway, intimidating to Skinner. From the championship tee, anyone taking a direct line to the flag had to carry his drive 290 yards over water to gain the reward of a mid-iron approach. Nearer the tee to the left there was a second landing area, allowing the professionals a safer option of hitting a two-iron or three-wood. Closer still there was a third section of fairway which required only a 180-yard carry but left a second shot of around 300 yards to the green.

`You went on about me rubbishing the course, Bob, and by and large you're right. All things considered, most of it is pretty good. But this hole really is too easy for me. All I have to do is hit over the water and it's at my mercy.

`Well, not for me. If O'Malley can't design a decent finish for me, I'll create my own challenge.'

I understand,' said Skinner. 'There's the rest of us, and there's you, Darren, or at least you and Rick. That's how you see life, isn't it?'

Atkinson looked at him, and Skinner caught in his eyes, as well as the deadly ruthlessness, something which he had seen only once before in his life, an arrogance, a belief in personal infallibility so strong that it seemed to engulf mere fanaticism and carry on to something beyond. 'Have it as you will,' he said.

He called out to McGuire. 'Four-iron, please, Mario.' The knowledgeable crowd murmured in surprise. Skinner, who had been doing his best all week to ignore the spectators' presence, looked at them over his shoulder, and saw for the first time among them, his daughter. A slight frown creased Alex's forehead.

He turned back to watch Atkinson, feeling on his face the first fat drops of the rain which had been threatening all afternoon. 'First landing area, Bob,' said the golfer quietly. He hit an easy gentle shot which soared high over the water to pitch softly in the centre of the first promontory. 'There, that leaves me three hundred to the green, and a bunker in line with the flag. No one could get on in two from there. A hundred quid says I get a birdie. Got the bottle for that, Mr Skinner?'

`You're on,' said the policeman, evenly. 'Neil, my driver please.' He lined up on the central landing area, swung smoothly and struck the ball as cleanly as he could. The distance across the water was 230 yards, but the adrenaline was coursing through his body and the ball cleared it easily. Its leftto-right fade was accentuated by a friendly bounce, leaving him around 190 yards to the green.

As Skinner walked from the tee, pulling on his new all-weather garment, Atkinson fell into step beside him. 'You know, Bob,' he said, with undisguised mockery. 'This story you've told me, it's really good. It flows along nicely, I have to admit. But a story is all it will ever be,

'cause it's got a couple of loose bricks.

“For openers, I remember quite well meeting that dozy greenkeeper — on Monday — and giving him an autograph. I was heading off to practice and I signed it in a hurry. Golfers are notorious among collectors; half the autographs we do are written on the march, so no two signatures look the same… apart from those on cheques. That's how it was with Webb.'

At least that's what you'll say in court,' said Skinner, as they walked in step around the first curve of the Truth Loch.

Exactly! And you know better than I do what a good QC will do to Hughie Webb in cross-examination. After five minutes he won't be able to swear what month it was let alone what day of the week. I don't fancy your star witness in the White case, mate.

`Tell you something else. I don't see Susan Kinture standing up in court. I'd have to say that she came to my room…' He looked at Skinner in mock outrage. 'My hostess, for God's sake

… climbed straight into my bed, muttered something about not having had any for years, and set about me. I'd have to say that I told her next day that if she ever did anything like that again, I'd go straight to Hector.'

He slowed, as they approached his ball. 'Those are two problems you've got. Here's another.

Masur only decided at the last minute to walk back to Bracklands, after he and Morton had their second barney. How the hell could Rick have known about that? There are a few claims of empathy in twins; you know, one experiencing the other's pain even when they're miles apart, but nobody in his right mind's going to suggest that they're telepathic.'

He stopped beside his ball, and knelt down to look at its lie on the soft, lush, velvety grass.

'Watch this, Mr Policeman,' he said, standing up. 'Driver, please, Mario.' McGuire looked at him in surprise, but Atkinson nodded in confirmation and held out his hand, snapping his fingers. Behind them the crowd murmured as they saw the white-bibbed policeman caddy remove the cover from the longest club in the bag, notoriously uncontrollable even from the best of positions on the fairway. Atkinson swung the driver experimentally.

Standing behind the ball he looked down the line of the 300-yard shot which faced him, nodding to himself as he planned it.

Skinner could picture the look in his eyes as he stepped up to address his ball, ignoring the rain, which was growing heavier by the minute. He swung with an unimaginable combination of power and finesse, thundering it away yet leaving the grass unmarked. The Titleist soared in its early flight out over the loch, heading, it seemed, far to the right of its target. Then, with a curve which defied gravity, it drew unerringly back in towards the green, pitching first on the fringe, then leaping forward to the flag. Skinner strained his eyes against the gloom of the afternoon, but was certain that he saw the ball come to a dead stop on its second bounce, looking for all the world to lie on the very edge of the hole.

The view of the spectators behind the rope barrier was hampered by the bunker which guarded the green, and by the distance itself. Some cheered, but others stayed silent, not seeing where the shot had finished, thinking perhaps that it had gone awry. In the stands beside the clubhouse there was a moment of stunned silence, as the crowds there in the distance took in the sheer enormity of Atkinson's blow. And then, as one, they leaped to their feet, some waving programmes or hats. It took a moment for the sound to travel back down the fairway, and then it reached them, crashing over them like a wave.

The champion turned back to the policeman. 'Impossible shot that, wasn't it? To bend a ball like that with a driver, to hit it that far, and then to pull it up with backspin. You're right, Bob.

There's the rest, and there's me.

A hundred quid, I reckon.'

'It'll be worth it,' said Skinner, 'for that shot. But what a pity that you don't keep your power-lust for the golf course. What a pity that you see people as you see golf balls, to be manipulated, and crushed when necessary, with the same level of feeling.'

They walked on, towards the next landing area, and Skinner's ball. 'Telepathy, Darren, you said earlier. Almost, but not quite. You ask me how Rick knew that Masur would be walking back alone to Bracklands, in the dark, and vulnerable?

`Dead simple, really. You've both got mobile phones. The latest digital GSM model by Motorola. They've got numbers in series, and they were supplied by a company in the South of England. They work internationally, so wherever you are, you can talk to each other. It is telepathy of a sort. One of you has a thought, and the other can share it seconds later.

`Remember the night of the PGA dinner? You were embarrassed when your phone rang.

Embarrassed! You almost swallowed your tongue. That was Rick, calling you by mistake.

That's not a guess. I know it. I've checked, you see. This is your world, Darren, but I've got mine, and there I can do things that you couldn't imagine.

I know Rick called you during the dinner. I know you called him afterwards. I know you called him last night, after my detectives had left Bracklands. I know that he called Morton just a couple of minutes after that. If I'd had a wee bit more warning, I'd even know for sure what he said, and what you said to him. But the jigsaw didn't fit in time for me to do that.'

They arrived at the detective's ball. He looked down the line to the green. The flag was guarded by the encroaching bunker but, from the line of Atkinson's shot, he knew that the hole was cut well back from it. ' "Play the card, not the course", you told me. Best golfing advice I've ever had, and I'll never forget it. Let's see if I can finish in style. Eighteen straight pars and Skinner's round will be the best he's ever played.

`Five-wood, please Neil.' Mcllhenney gave him the club, with a brief smile of encouragement. He lined up his shot, gathered his breath and his concentration and hit it, high and handsome as he had intended down the line of the flag over the bunker and to the back of the green. The applause of the crowd was less rapturous than for Atkinson's shot, but it was warm nonetheless. His chest swelled with pride. The champion joined him and they walked together towards the green, under the eerie, threatening, darkening skies, in the rain the intensity of which was gathering slowly but inexorably, to the breaking point of the storm ahead.

I'll fill in the last part now, will I?' said Skinner. 'Where has Rick been all this week, to have been able to do all these things, to react as swiftly as he did to your two telephone calls, to take advantage of sudden opportunities to remove the only two guys who stood in the way of your ambition to make DRA Management the Number One force in world golf, with the Number One player at its head?

Was he booked into a hotel near here? Hardly, not looking like he does, among all these golf fans.' He shook his head, and took from his back pocket a small white card, on which a few lines were scrawled.

On August 1, a Winnebago mobile home — the compact version, not one of the big ostentatious jobs that stand out a mile — was registered in the name of DRA Management, number P 325 QRC. These things are popular among golfers, especially those who don't have wives. Arthur Highfield reckons this new one must be your fifth.

`Before that, last March in fact, a Yamaha trail bike, 125 cc, was registered in the name of Reginald Atkinson, number N 763 LRC. Arthur thought he remembered seeing a bike mounted on the back of your last camper vehicle.

One of my guys got these numbers this morning through the PNC. Then he had calls made to all the caravan sites. We struck it lucky at Yellowcraig, outside Dirleton. It isn't a commercial site: the local Ranger Service looks after it, and the sort of people who go there tend to wear green wellies rather than golf shoes. The warden we spoke to remembers the vehicle. There's no register kept there, but his description matches the one we've got.

It won't be there now, though.' Skinner's pace slowed as they approached the green. 'This is the really clever bit. Earlier on today, Rick had a call on his mobile. There was hellish interference on the line, but he'd just have been able to make out you, or rather a voice which through all that static he was certain was yours, telling him to drive the van to the course and to meet you behind the eighteenth after the tournament. Then the interference got too bad and the line went dead.

`He tried to call you back, but he got a pre-recorded message telling him that there was a fault with your phone.'

Skinner stopped, in the rain, and looked at the great golfer with a savage smile. 'I can't touch you, Darren. Not yet, at least. I'm sure that twins talk to each other on the phone all the time, and that would be your defence. But I can arrest Rick in connection with Morton's death, after that phone call he made to him. Then, after the motorcycle tracks in the mud at the foot of Witches' Hill, which my people found at first light this morning, are matched to the Yamaha, I can charge him with his murder.

`Who knows, maybe I'll find something in the Winnebago that'll be a perfect match with the dent in Michael White's skull, and in Masur's. But tough if I don't. Doesn't matter to me whether Rick gets three life sentences or just one. Either way, I'll make sure that the prosecution drops enough hints to the judge to get him a twenty-five-year minimum sentence.

Now, champion of champions, your public awaits. Go ahead and take your applause, and your million quid.'

And so Darren Atkinson, as he had done so often before, strode alone on to the eighteenth green of Witches' Hill, to the roars of thousands of his admirers, waving and smiling, and hiding his real self from their sight. As Skinner followed him up the green to fading applause, he walked across to mark his ball where the shot of his golfing life, or anyone else's, had finished, two and a half feet from the flag.

Skinner glanced up at the leader board and saw, to his quiet satisfaction, that Oliver M'tebe, with a final round of 65, had finished a comfortable second. Then he bent down, marked his own ball, wiped it clean and replaced it, with the maker's name pointing directly towards the hole. As he paced out the distance, he glanced across at the silent crowd, and saw his daughter once again. For an instant their smiles linked across the green, and then he bent to his eight-yard putt. Keeping the head of the Zebra clear of the grass, as Atkinson had said, he stroked the ball. It rolled smoothly on its way, ten feet, twenty feet, its line two inches to the right, until, in the last two feet of its travel it curved towards the hole and fell in, for his first birdie of the day and a round of 71.

He punched the air in delight, as the crowd shouted, smiling and waving to Alex as he retrieved his ball from the hole and backed off, leaving the oval green to the champion.

The crowd fell silent in expectation, as Atkinson, now wearing a dark blue waterproof jacket, strode across the close-mown grass. He replaced his ball and looked down the thirty inches of his putt, satisfying himself that there was no swing or borrow that he did not see. He bent over the ball, and set himself for his sixty-first and last shot of the day.

The rumble of thunder which broke into the silence, although still some way distant, drew a gasp from the crowd. His concentration broken, Atkinson stood up to let it subside.

To Skinner, watching intently from behind, it was as if the man had looked into a mirror. The figure who faced him, standing behind the green, and whose puzzled eyes the golfer's met, could have been Madame Tussaud's finest work of art. Skinner had met twins before, but never any who were more identical than these. Height, build, hair-colouring, suntan, even their blue waterproofs; everything matched.

And then Rick Atkinson's expression changed, as he caught something in his brother's face, and completed the mirror image. The look in his eyes was cold, hard and furious as sudden comprehension dawned. It confirmed for Skinner, beyond any final doubt, the vision of the crimes which he had pieced together in his detective's eye. Atkinson began to back away into the crowd, but found himself restrained on either side, discreetly but effectively, by Andy Martin and Brian Mackie.

The crowd, oblivious to the exchange, fell silent again. The rain began to hammer down harder as Darren bent over his putt for a second time. He struck it quickly. The ball rolled true and caught the hole, but it was travelling too fast and spun round the lip, finishing on the edge but still on the putting surface. The crowd's groan could not drown out the sound of the champion's slap against his thigh. He reached over and tapped the ball into the hole to win the Murano Million. Their disappointment forgotten, the crowd rose, cheering.

Skinner walked across the green to his partner, unsmiling, yet with his hand outstretched.

'That was some round of golf, Darren,' he said quietly, 'given the conditions. Sixty-two, ten under par, in the final round of a tournament. But only you and I will ever know how good it really was.' He took his hand in a grip rather than a shake. 'Now come over here, before you go for your prize and get your reward. I want you to hear this.'

He eased Atkinson in front of him towards his twin at the edge of the green. As they reached him Alison Higgins stepped between them, her back to Darren. 'Reginald Atkinson,' she said,

'I am arresting you in connection with the death of Mike Morton. You do not have to say anything, but…' Rick's face was impassive as she recited the mandatory caution. He looked, not at her, but over her head at his brother.

I didn't…' Darren began.

I know. Keep it that way. Don't say anything.' Without a fuss, and without a single spectator being aware of the drama, he was led away by Martin and Mackie.

Atkinson and Skinner were left in the rain. Their two caddies stood on the far side of the green. 'I suppose those two stooges were in on the act,' said the golfer, nodding towards them.

In on what act?' said Skinner. 'Think yourself lucky. You got a free caddy. Mario can't take a penny of that million of yours, but I'll have to pay the other bugger. Now come on, let's get our scores in and they can have the presentation. We should let the people get away home before the weather gets any worse. As well as that, Darren, having to let you walk free from here is sticking in my throat, so the sooner I'm shot of you the happier I'll be.'

He led Atkinson off the green. Behind them McIlhenney produced Skinner's big, bulging, rolled golf umbrella from its pouch down the side of his bag.

As they headed for the clubhouse, Skinner's way was blocked. 'I suppose I should say well done, Skinner,' said Everard Balliol. 'Damn fine round that must have been. Too damn fine for a seven-handicapper, but I suppose the company made the difference.' The taciturn Texan looked at him. 'We'll have a rematch some day, buddy. Depend on it.'

`Your place or mine, any time,' said Skinner, and resumed his progress to the clubhouse.

`You think you're getting away with this, Darren, and in a physical sense, you're probably right. Rick won't say a word to implicate you; I guess he'll claim that Morton threatened him.

He'll get his twenty-five years regardless, but you'll still be a hero, not tarnished at all. You'll be able to headhunt someone to run DRA for you and build the business into something that'll let Rick live in luxury when he gets out. The grand design is under way, even if your twin will be over sixty before he can enjoy it.'

He paused. 'You know, ultimately people like you and he only care about yourselves. Rick won't shop you because he couldn't gain from it, that's all. Pretty soon you'll have got used to the idea of life without him. You'll build your empire. That's what you're thinking, even now, isn't it?

Except that's not how it's going to be. Mike Morton's father, the old man of influence, is still alive. Masur's Yakuza friends, the boys in Tokyo, they're still around. And I'm here.

I know the full story, Darren, and I'm going to make it my business to see that they hear it too: all of it. Don't build yourself an empire, friend. Build yourself a fortress, because they'll be round to see you sometime fairly soon.'

Atkinson looked at him, weighing him up. 'That's bullshit. You wouldn't do that. You couldn't do it.'

Skinner stared back, with eyes like ice, and Atkinson saw him, saw all of him, for the first time. 'You haven't the faintest notion of what I could do, Darren. And you better believe that I will do just what I've said. I've told you, I've met people like you before, one or two of them, and none of them has ever got away from me.

`Neither will you slither away from what you and your brother have done here. You may think you have. But sooner or later, someone, Sicilian or Japanese, will come calling. Now's a good time to quit, partner. At the top. Because it's going to be impossible to stay there if you can't go out in public for fear of your life. DRA Management is finished. You're finished. My word upon it.

`Now, let's get these scores in and this presentation over with. Oh yes, and there's that hundred quid. Birdie at the last, remember? You owe me. I'm not letting you off with that either. See you outside.' He strode into the Recorder's tent and handed his signed scorecard to the Marquis of Kinture, who was acting in that capacity for the conclusion of his tournament, then turned on his heel and walked out again without a word.

Outside, beside the eighteenth green, where the crowds still waited for the presentation, Norton Wales and Hideo Murano had joined Mcllhenney and McGuire, and the four were sheltering under large umbrellas from the steadily worsening rain. A girl in the sponsor's livery handed one to Skinner as he joined them. Beside them, a small presentation table had been set up in front of the stand.

Skinner's clubs lay at Mcllhenney's feet, but McGuire leaned on Atkinson's huge bag. The ACC looked at it idly. Suddenly his eyes seemed to narrow, and he looked more closely. He looked over his shoulder and called, loudly, to Arthur Highfield, who, in a trenchcoat, was setting up a cordless microphone on the table.

`Come and take a look at this,' he said, pointing to the bag.

Highfield walked across impatiently. 'Count them,' Skinner ordered. The PGA Secretary counted the clubs in Atkinson's bag. Once, twice, a third time, his consternation growing by the minute. 'My God,' he said eventually. 'He's got fifteen clubs in his bag. One too many.' He looked at McGuire. Has anyone tampered with this?'

It's never been out of my sight, sir,' said the Detective Sergeant, indignantly. Highfield groaned, and put a hand to his head.

`What's the penalty for an extra club?' asked Skinner. `Depends,' said the official. 'Has he registered his score?' `Yes, I left him in there doing just that.'

Oh my God,' sighed Highfield. 'Then he's disqualified.'

`How embarrassing!' said Skinner. McGuire, Mcllhenney, Wales and Murano looked as shocked as he. He thought for a moment. `Look, Arthur, don't you think that the best thing you can do is to scrap the presentation and stand down the crowd.'

`Mmm. I think you're right.' He walked back to the microphone and switched it on. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he called, and paused. A second boom of thunder, much closer this time, gave him inspiration. 'If I may have your attention please. I am very sorry, but it has been decided, because of the weather, that the presentation will take place indoors. I thank you for your attendance today and all this week and hope that you have enjoyed the wonderful golf which we have seen.' As he switched off the mike, Darren Atkinson emerged solemnly from the clubhouse. Highfield rushed off to meet him.

`Maybe we should make ourselves scarce till we find out what's happening,' said Skinner to Wales and Murano. 'My daughter's over there. I'm going to talk to her.'

He reached Alex as she stepped down from the stand, the hood of her oilskin jacket tied tight under her chin. 'Hi Pops,' she said, excitedly, easing herself under his umbrella for added protection. 'You were brilliant.' The thunder crashed again, shaking the ground. The rain tumbled down. Although it was only a few minutes after five o'clock, it was as if night was about to fall.

`When are you going to tell me what's happened?' Alex shouted above the downpour. 'That man Andy and Brian took away, that looked like…'

Suddenly Skinner felt a powerful tug on his left arm. He swung round, sending water cascading from his umbrella on to the figure before him. Darren Atkinson's composure had cracked at last. He stood there, almost glowing with rage, waving a golf club in the air.

`You bastard!' he screamed, waving the club. It was a Shark's Fin nine-iron, new and shiny.

Skinner smiled at him, and a feeling of satisfaction flooded over him. 'You didn't think I'd let you pocket the Million, did you Darren? How could I when you've let me down, along with everyone else who loves this game?

As well as being a conspirator and a murderer by association, you've betrayed millions of people, me included, who made you their example. What you did to Oliver, as well as being illegal in every country I've ever heard of, was plain cheating. The lad deserves the Million, not you.'

`Damn your hide!' Atkinson shouted. 'You and your monkeys planted this club in my bag.'

Skinner shrugged his shoulders. 'So prove it.' The thunder crashed, hugely. 'It's just your bad luck,' he said, as its echoes subsided, 'that I'm at my best on a Sunday afternoon as well!'

Darren Atkinson snarled in impotent rage, spun round on his heel, and stalked away from the policeman and his daughter, the club grasped tightly, near the head, in his right fist. He strode down the fairway, the rain thrashing down on him in torrents. They watched him as he came almost to the edge of the Truth Loch, and as he pulled his arm back and above his head, to throw the alien nine-iron, the hated cause of his defeat, into its dark, storm-dappled waters.

The single shaft of lightning shot down from the darkened sky, cast like a huge jagged, shining spear. It found the route which it sought in the club raised up in Darren's hand. The golfer seemed to be consumed by it as it coursed through him to the earth below. He jerked and danced in its grasp, like the flickering black centre of a huge candle, its brilliant white light reflecting in the Truth Loch beyond and flooding Bob and Alex where they stood.

It vanished after a few seconds, but by then they were blinded. Against the dying sound of its accompanying thunder, Skinner heard his daughter scream, and felt himself tremble. He realised that he was still holding his umbrella and threw it from him, instinctively, as far away as he could. Again and again, he squeezed his eyes tight shut, as if to rub away the last of the searing light.

Gradually his vision returned, and he realised that he and Alex had been edging, hand-in-hand, down the slope, towards the centre of the lightning strike, tugged like moths towards the candle. He held her still, pressing her face against his chest to help her eyes recover, and to prevent her seeing, when they did, what lay before them, on the shores of the Truth Loch, in the centre of the charred circle, a twisted, melted thing in its hand.

Trembling still, Skinner looked on and whispered, 'And by lightning..' to no one in particular.